Sarabo-Halley, Craig, Patterson: Facing reality

Oct 02, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – The WPA operating in the only format Guyanese have come to know it by – press conference politics – said that it gave the PNC four names from which to choose two parliamentarians to represent it in the House. It so happened, the PNC assigned it one and it was Tabitha Sarabo-Halley (hereafter refers to as TSH).
The WPA said that even if the PNC chose one, its first preference was a candidate named Ali Majeed who would rotate with TSH during the five years in the House. The WPA asked for that format to be accepted. The PNC refused. The WPA pulled out of the APNU combination.
Here is where the story gets absorbing. Once the WPA exited the APNU, then TSH’s eligibility for parliament lapsed since the WPA could no longer be considered. TSH then resigned from the WPA. In doing so she then signalled to the PNC that she is eligible to be selected as an APNU+AFC candidate. The PNC accepted her position.
What interpretation can one put to the direction TSH has gone into? Is she an opportunist or has she seen the dialectical changes in Guyanese politics and she wants to have a role that she feels should not be taken away from her? There are two assessments one can make. If she is an inflexible WPA ideologue, then, on a matter of principles, she should not hold a seat that the WPA should get and she should show loyalty to the WPA.
The other evaluation is that she can justify leaving the WPA because she sees 2020 as finally bringing down the curtain on that anachronism. Why then should anyone prevent her from embracing activism if that is in her heart? David Hinds, is the person who speaks through press conference politics for the WPA. Hinds represented a moral confusion. The WPA was a one-man show from outside of Guyana. Hinds virtually lives and works and has his existence in the US.
With the PNC’s loss of power in the 2020 election, Hinds knows that the future capture of power by the PNC borders on the improbable and impossible. He knows he is not coming back to work and live in Guyana so the final rites of the fictional WPA have been read. He has formed a brand new organization – Society for Afro-Guyanese Empowerment (SAGE). This development has justified TSH looking out for her own political future.
Leonard Craig has resigned from all positions of authority in the AFC – executive committee, management committee and deputy General Secretary. David Patterson has resigned as General Secretary and has tendered his resignation as a parliamentarian. Up to the time of writing, he has not withdrawn it but the gang of three (formerly the gang of four) inside the AFC has been broaching his replacement with other AFC big-wigs. The emergency meeting of the AFC on Sunday will put the question as to if the AFC should accept his exit. Patterson seems strong in his stance of leaving.
Craig has a doctorate in administration. Patterson did well in his private career as a quantity surveyor. Both men must have asked the question – where does the AFC go from here? Even a school boy can answer it. Whatever hopes the AFC had of staying alive after its devastated showing in the 2015 general poll and the 2018 local government election have been completely dissolved by its dismal performance in the 2020 election.
The APNU+AFC lost by 24,000 votes. Those were ballots that were directly related to AFC constituencies in 2011 that decreased in 2015 then disappeared in 2020. The PNC knows that its 32 seats came from the majority of African Guyanese with a percentage from mixed voters and the Indigenous communities. The 2020 election results revealed to the world that the raison d’être of the APNU+AFC coalition no longer is alive.
In parliament, there is no AFC corner. There is one entity named the APNU+AFC. Whatever remnants of feelings people still have for the AFC, those people know that such expressions cannot be catered for by the AFC because the AFC has to accept the overall direction of the opposition in parliament. Obviously these are questions that Craig and Patterson must have asked themselves.
Craig, with a doctorate, is in his forties. Surely, he knows from the shape of politics to come, his political dreams, if he has any, cannot be realized in a bygone creature named the AFC. Patterson may have used the excuse of the Region Four vice chairman debacle as the opportunity to “call it George.” I once shared a close friendship with Patterson. Power intoxication destroyed our camaraderie and Patterson himself. I wish Craig the best in his future plans.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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